How I Reduction Fire My Gas Kiln

I’ll be firing the kiln up tomorrow with a heap of pots stuffed inside, including many larger vases and some rather nice angular bowls, there’s also three black stoneware pieces I don’t have high hopes for but let’s see if my theory pans out and they survive without bloating. I don’t fire this every month, or even every week. I tend to spend 2-3 months making and glazing, then I’ll do a whole spate of reduction firings, getting the work in and out as fast as I can. During the warmer months I’ll avoid firing on the stifling hot days as it becomes unbearable in the studio, kilns kept inside, or in your workspace, are great in the winter as it keeps the place toasty, but otherwise it’s essentially a gigantic noisy radiator. This Rohde KG-340 is operated by hand, I manually turn valves and control the dampers in order to increase the temperature and to initiate the reduction atmosphere at 860ºC. This is relatively early in the firing cycle for this, yet any later and the bottom section of the kiln doesn’t catch the reduction and all the pots are ruined. That perhaps makes it all sound scarier and more difficult than it really is, in reality it’s a breeze to fire, I barely touch it for most of the time save for at a few opportune moments. Once fired, the kiln normally takes about two days to cool down. I don’t rush it, I don’t open up the dampers prematurely, instead it’s just left after being crash cooled to 1000ºC to very gradually decrease in temperature. The one thing I try not to do, is let it cool for longer than this, as if I leave over a weekend, for instance, some of the glazes I use tend to grow far more crystals in the surface, which almost obliterate the intended glaze. #glaze #rohdekilns #reductionfiring #pottery #glaze #kiln #handmade